Areas such as industrial yards, apartment complexes, office complexes often control entry and egress. This is accomplished by use of a security gate which may either be a sliding gate or a pivotal gate and requires the use of a key, entry of code or use of a magnetic card to actuate an electro-mechanical lock to open the gate.
A problem that arises with gates of this type is that they are generally quite large and often heavy and, over time due to normal use, wear and tear and in some cases abuse, the latch and strike components of the electro-mechanical lock become misaligned. This misalignment may cause the lock components to not properly engage, resulting in lack of security requiring maintenance and repair.
Electromagnetic locks are commonly used to address these applications, but only in fail safe or locked when power is applied mode. This mode of locking is beneficial to accommodate the pre-load often found with a heavy or misaligned gate. Currently there are no solutions for fail secure applications where constant power is not available or not preferred. Another problem with conventional electro-mechanical or electro-magnetic locking products used with various access control devices is in matching the voltage of the electric locking product with the access control components. Yet another problem is the alignment of electromechanical locks with the movable gate mounted strike device.